Young children who abandon error behaviourally still have to free themselves mentally: a retrospective test for inhibition in intuitive physics

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Abstract
When preschoolers overcome persistent error, subsequent patterns of correct choices may identify how the error had been overcome. Children who no longer misrepresented a ball rolling down a bent tube as though it could only fall vertically, were asked sometimes to approach and sometimes to avoid where the ball landed. All children showed requisite task‐switching flexibility. The pattern of 4‐year‐olds’ correct choices among different places showed unnecessary avoidance of any place that would previously have tempted them into a vertical‐approach error, 5‐year‐olds rebounded into a reversal, and 7‐year‐olds were flexible. The data attest to an inhibition mechanism, ruling out competing possibilities.